Going to Kollege with Dan Hicks

If you’re not quite sure who Kay Kyser, Jim Kweskin or even Bob Wills is, then Dan Hicks is coming to town to set you straight.

Surely you know who Dan Hicks is, right? The jazzy singer/songwriter has been a Bay Area performer since the 1960s, first as drummer of the Ur-psychedelic band the Charlatans from 1965-1968 (they beat both the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane out of the Haight-Ashbury gate), then as the leader of Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, one of the best-named if not smartest bands of the era.

Hicks, who seems to play the every other year or so, returns to our local stage on Saturday Aug. 6 – yes, with the Hot Licks – in a new revue called the . “Every now and then I have a kind of concept thing,” Hicks told me by phone a few days ago. “This time I’ve got the Kollege of Musical Knowledge we’re bringing in.” One of the first performances of the KOMK was covered by Mill Valley Patch in .

“It’s a sort of brief musical history starting with blues, American music, pop music, jazz and rock,” Hicks said. “We do a blues, we do a jug band thing, we do a kind of swing thing with a Count Basie tune, we do a couple of my songs…”

There are several classics in the Hicks/Licks repertoire, including the “I Scare Myself,” “Where’s the Money?” and “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” that fit comfortably in such a revue, due in part to the wide-ranging influences that percolate through them, influences of jazz, of swing, of folk, of the European club music typified by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.

It won’t be the first time a musical revue dug into the history of music for its playlist. Benny Goodman’s celebrated 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall included a conscious tribute to American jazz, from ragtime to “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” Richard Thompson turned a Playboy magazine question about his favorite songs into “1,000 Years of Popular Music” – a little Robert Bruce, a little Gilbert and Sullivan, some Cole Porter and even Britney Spears.

You can bet, though, that Dan Hicks’ version of musical history is funnier. The guy has a wry wit and deadpan delivery that can either leave you scratching your head or rolling on the floor (as I did when I heard his interview with Bill Bowker on KRSH about 6 months ago, promoting his newest album “Crazy for Christmas” – “You’ve got your Easter songs, and your Flag Day albums, but I think the Christmas record is a good idea”).

“I got the idea from Kay Kyser in the 1940s, he had a Kollege of Musical Knowledge kind of like a quiz show he’d do on the radio.” Kyser was a bandleader who, like Hicks, was well known for his sense of humor as well as musical chops – despite 11 number one hits, it was his Kollege of Musical K’nowledge (often mispronounced in parody) that brought him lasting fame.

Likewise Bob Wills, whose Texas Playboys were often dismissed as a novelty act (like the Hot Licks?) because of their leader's trademark falsetto "Ahhhh! Take it away, Leon, take it away." But no other American band had such a broad reach, from Texas honky-tonks to Kansas City jazz clubs to the roots of Outlaw Country.

“The show [KMOK] is something I wrote and kind of researched, so I try to be informative,” he said. “It’s got a bunch of facts and things, so you’re going to know what a head arrangement is and what the piano had to drink,” this last a tip-off that some Tom Waits material will work its way into the show.

 “I think a lot of the music is kind of familiar. Maybe a couple of tunes are a little obscure, like 'Beedle-um-Bum',” Hicks went on. Which brought up another strong influence on Dan Hicks -- the 1960s jug band scene dominated by Jim Kweskin. Along with vocalist and bandleader Kweskin, the core of the Jug Band included singer-guitarist Geoff Muldaur and his ex-wife Maria Muldaur among others.

“I’m sort of self-taught,” said Hicks. “I just picked up the guitar when I was 20, when I was going to Santa Rosa JC” – Hicks lived in Santa Rosa from the time he was 11, and graduated from Montgomery High. “I started out with Kingston Trio tunes, simple stuff, then getting into blue grass. I really liked the folk stuff, and when Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band came out I was a big fan.”

Like a jug band, Hicks’ instrumentation is pre-electric, without a drummer but featuring violin, a couple acoustic guitars, bass, and the two female singers, collectively known as the Hot Licks. The original “girls” (Sherri Snow and Christine Gancher) have long since moved on, but today’s band features “a couple Marin county jazz singers, Roberta Donnay and Daria [no last name],” he said.

I told him that when I first saw his band perform – in Santa Cruz around 1970 – I thought it was like Jim Kweskin with sex appeal. He graced me with a chuckle.

“We added the two chicks, and it’s still going, the same formula," he said. "I think the musicianship has gotten better, and I hope my singing has gotten better. It’s got the same thing, really.”

For much of the 1980s, Hicks seemed to mellow so far out he dropped from the tree. Another band of his, the Acoustic Warriors, played locally, but it wasn’t until he revived the Hot Licks concept and signed with Surfdog in 2000 that his career got back in gear, though the fast lane was never his milieu. 

“Just the fact that there’s a label that’s interested in me, and they’ll produce and market stuff, gives me impetus to put product out there.”

That product – songs with swing and a smile – is what you’ll find when you show up at the Raven on Aug. 6 for the Kollege of Musical Knowledge. Be prepared to learn something, and have fun doing it.